Zika Virus Infection of Fetal Neural Stem Cells

Take a suspension of the Zika virus, a pathogenic virus, having the desired multiplicity of infection, the ratio of virus particles to cells.

Mix the virus suspension with human fetal brain neural stem cells.

Incubate the mixture, allowing the virus to bind to receptors on the cells, facilitating viral endocytosis.

Next, centrifuge the mixture and discard the supernatant containing non-internalized viral particles.

Resuspend the virus-infected cells in media and seed them into an extracellular matrix protein-coated multi-well plate, allowing cell adhesion.

Incubate the plate.

The internalized Zika virus utilizes the host cell machinery to produce new viral particles.

Viral replication significantly alters cell morphology, causing cellular damage and facilitating the spread of infection to neighboring cells.

The Zika virus-infected cells can be used for further analysis.